Hope in Crisis: Reflections from Tigray

After a visit to a region struggling with poverty and conflict, Amanda Rives makes a passionate appeal for a system that has saved countless millions of lives over the decades. 

18 March, 2025

There is a reason the humanitarian aid sector has expanded over the past few years: the number of global crises has dramatically increased along with the urgent need for life-saving assistance. 

After decades of improvements in maternal and child mortality rates, food security and nutrition, economic resilience, and educational outcomes, progress seemingly came to a screeching halt in 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic upended the global economy. With commodity prices already creeping up, the War in Ukraine—the world’s breadbasket and a main source of global agricultural fertilizer—further aggravated food system instability, plunging millions of people into hunger.

Record numbers of people today face forced displacement linked with natural disasters and unrelenting armed conflict and remain cut off from health services, educational opportunities, and meaningful employment. Nearly 1 in 5 children are currently living in or fleeing from conflict zones, and over 700,000 people across 5 countries are at imminent risk of famine. The combined effect of all of this turmoil is that 305 million people (1 in 26 people) across the world need humanitarian assistance today—a stark increase from a few years ago.
 

The kindness of strangers 
People and nations around the world have historically responded to crises with generosity, providing the crucial resources for humanitarian operations in some of the fragile places on earth. In my role with World Vision International’s Disaster Management Team, I’ve worked with colleagues in places such as Sudan, Lebanon, and Haiti to ensure that the funding World Vision receives reaches the people who need it the most—people barred by unimaginable circumstances from alternative options for meeting their basic needs. 

Alongside humanitarians worldwide, we have faithfully and responsibly laboured to address the needs highlighted in the Global Humanitarian Overview each year. In 2024 alone, World Vision reached 35.2 million people in crisis, while working tirelessly to advocate for resolutions to the catastrophes forcing people into desperate situations in the first place.

At the same time, I’ve watched with horror over the past five years as the number of people in need continued to increase, armed conflict, economic volatility, and preventable climate variations remained largely unchecked. In addition to these challenges, at a time of such unprecedented need, drastic reductions in foreign aid and a shrinking humanitarian space are further limiting humanitarian organisations’ ability to reach millions of children in need. This is putting children’s lives at risk. 
 

The reality on the ground 
In this rapidly evolving humanitarian landscape, just two weeks ago, I had the opportunity to witness, first hand, some of the amazing relief and recovery work World Vision and our partners are doing on the ground in the Tigray region, Ethiopia. The conflict in northern Ethiopia is one of the humanitarian responses I’ve worked closely with. Since 2020, Tigray has been mired in armed conflict, leaving over 1 million people displaced, two-thirds of households severely food insecure, 38% of children under 5 acutely malnourished, and large swaths of land degraded. While the situation remains dire, since 2022, a fragile peace has allowed some children, families, and communities to start returning home, to regain a sense of safety, and to begin the process of putting their lives back together. 

While in northern Ethiopia, I visited World Vision’s programmes supporting children under 5 and pregnant and lactating women with nutritional interventions and education to combat undernourishment. I met with savings groups, carefully investing pooled resources in rebuilding lost herds of livestock and starting small businesses. I saw irrigation ditches built with international funding transforming barren landscapes into lush pastures after years of conflict and environmental destruction. I spoke with a group of men participating in a community-led mental health and psychosocial support group, who described the residual pain they carried with them since the war and lamented the ways this unresolved suffering harms their own well-being and that of their families. 

The difference aid makes
I also heard from mothers and fathers about how all of these programmes and others are helping their families move past the horrific experiences of the past few years. Thanks to humanitarian funding, their children are recovering from malnutrition and returning to school, household assets are being replenished, and arable land restored. Even though peace remains tenuous, the people I met in Tigray expressed confidence that their lives are improving. And notably, they attributed this newfound hope in large part to foreign aid. A group of women, all heads of households, told me, “We owe our lives and the lives of our children to humanitarian aid—we would have starved.”

Over the past few weeks, the world has witnessed drastic funding cuts across the globe reshaping investment in thousands of programmes that bring hope to people in crisis, including many of World Vision’s activities in Tigray. My learning trip to warehouses storing life-saving food aid quickly turned from understanding World Vision’s ground-level expertise in food assistance management to an assessment and discussion on strategies to avoid infestation, spoilage, and looting in case the food aid is not allowed to be distributed for an extended period of time. 

In a country already experiencing severe levels of food insecurity, the biggest concern is putting children, who are already suffering from acute malnutrition, at risk of dying if they do not get access to life-saving food.

The crucial humanitarian sector
World Vision has been around for 75 years now. We started operating as a humanitarian organisation before there was such a thing as the humanitarian system. Since 1950, we have witnessed and responded to incredible suffering and celebrated marvellous examples of transformation, hope, and resilience. We have endured massive shocks, listened, learned, and contributed to improvements in the humanitarian sector’s collective ways of working, including prioritising efforts to make aid more dignified, responsive, empowering, child-focused, and accountable to affected populations. 

We have taken on the issue of Protection from Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (PSEA) head-first, as an Interagency Standing Committee (IASC) Champion, to change our organizational culture and apply a survivor-cantered approach. We have overcome internal and external obstacles to strengthen our work across the humanitarian-development-peace nexus, build equitable relationships with local partner organisations, address humanitarian access constraints, and live out our Christian faith in our work. 

The humanitarian sector is at a critical juncture, yet humanitarian assistance remains a vital lifeline for millions of people enduring crises across the globe, as evidenced by the stories from children and families in Tigray. Without a speedy course correction, local communities at the forefront of war, the climate crisis, forced migration, and human rights abuses will face brutal yet preventable consequences. 

Being a humanitarian requires bold hope in the face of immense challenges. Whether standing among people in a war-torn community not knowing how or when we will be able to restart lifesaving assistance or facing seemingly insurmountable financial challenges alongside our partners, hope propels us to wholeheartedly pursue the vision we long to see—a world where everyone can experience peace, protection, justice, and fullness of life. This requires action today—whether as grassroots advocates, humanitarians, donor governments, UN representatives, or concerned global citizens—through bold, hopeful leadership in our spheres of influence. 

To learn more about World Vision’s work in Ethiopia visit here. To discover more about World Vision’s humanitarian and emergency work visit here. 

Amanda Rives is Senior Director, External Engagement & Resource Development. Disaster Management, World Vision International. She oversees World Vision’s global humanitarian advocacy working closely with UN partners and other humanitarian stakeholders and consortia including WFP, UNHCR, OCHA and ICVA.